


stuck in the system.

by billielurked



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Book of Boba Fett - Fandom, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Becoming Better People Together, Best Friends, Boba Fett & Fennec Shand Friendship, Boba Fett Needs A Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, How Boba & Fennec Survived, How Boba Survived the Sarlacc, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Planet Tatooine (Star Wars), Psychological Horror, Tusken Raiders (Star Wars), mention of slavery, monster killing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:00:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29141886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billielurked/pseuds/billielurked
Summary: Boba Fett has spent his entire life struggling against the inevitable.It just so happens that the inevitable took a taste and decided it did not want him, either.(Or- how Boba Fett learned to start living, and Fennec Shand learned to stop running.)
Relationships: Boba Fett & Fennec Shand
Comments: 21
Kudos: 37





	1. the millennium of pain

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I wrote anything, and likewise, I'm rusty on my Star Wars lore. I love the universe very much, but I am just trying to tell a story within it and have fun; go easy on me!  
> The story of Boba surviving the Sarlacc pit, saving Fennec's life, and choosing a new path in his own is really interesting to me. I hope I do them justice. I'll try to update once a week.  
> Enjoy my soundtrack for this story:  
> <https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1l6p7oukmpeM0JOHMRTzpQ?si=34ktFpJjQU2cxUOZsUY3uA>

Once, a long, long time ago, a Tusken Raider taught Boba how to say hello in their language. 

They had sat before him and shown him all he needed to know to get by to communicate with the Sand People. It was not so difficult to learn; the grammar was unique, and it took practice for him to shake off the rules and restrictions of Basic, Huttese, and the many other languages crowded in his mind, but it came more smoothly in time. It wasn't so far off from Mando'a. He didn't learn enough to be fluent, but enough to negotiate. Enough that he had the chance to share a story or two before bloodshed separated them. 

In the quiet of his living quarters he had spent time going over the motions, trying to fit his restless tongue around the guttural tones. It had been a long, long time ago, however, and he felt his current abilities paled in comparison to what he once knew. 

These abilities are especially hindered by the acid wounds that coat his body from head to toe.

“Get up,” urges the Tusken who had rolled him onto his back when he was found in the desert and declared him dead. “Get up, get up, drink.” 

Boba's mouth stings around the edges when he tries to oblige. He isn't dead. He must learn to live with it. 

“Hrgh,” he manages, coughing and sputtering as he is tugged up off the cot. The bitter water of Tatooine feels like a blessing, like a gift from Gods he has no faith in. He feels like some pathetic babe inhaling the water like his life depends on it. It most likely does, considering the dry rasp of his throat just moments before, and the terrible ache in his head that rendered him to this pathetic, huddling figure.

“Should be dead,” the Tusken declares. They do not move the reassuring pressure of their right hand from his back, speaking aloud with only one hand to clarify. Lacking the energy to reply, Boba just nods and drinks greedily from the pouch. 

“Sarlacc got you.” A cloth-bound fingertip traces over his bare forearm. “Tried to eat you. The wounds will eat you now if we don't stop them."

"I made it out," Boba says weakly, disbelieving that his escape from the horror may have been pointless. The Tusken’s right hand presses against his back, the left sliding up to press gently to his shoulder, halfway to an embrace. He has no energy to push them away. No energy to do anything but slump weakly into that weight when the water runs low. 

"We know how to stop the pain." The Tusken rests their cloth-wrapped head gently against his own. Their voice does not sound gentle to him, but the words are. “It will ease."

  
  


•

  
  


“You could’ve just left me, or put me out of my misery.”

“We are not cruel,” they say, and the swing of their arm is quick and sharp as they speak. “You were dying. We do not kill the dying. You took nothing from us.”

“I am taking water, now, and shelter, and clothes.” Boba refutes, throwing his shirt on the ground. He feels weak like this, exposed, hissing every time he so much as moves too fast. It hurts even to get dressed. It hurts to sleep. His skin sloughs off when put under friction, the acid has taken his hair, and his muscles still twitch involuntarily from time to time. He has tremors that shake spoons and containers out of his grip. Sometimes he awakes in the night in a terrible fit, body seizing uncontrollably. 

He is a useless thing, dragged about by the Tusken group, his presence like a tumor, a burden better abandoned. He is being a leech. Boba Fett depends on no one, much less strangers. 

“We shared that.. you did not _take_ it.” They make a sign with their hand which he doesn’t recognize. It must show on his face; they twist their hands about each other and begin again, elaborating. “You’ll come back someday, and do something good for us.”

He kicks weakly at the shirt he’d thrown down, feeling a little pathetic. “You don’t know that.”

They stare at him, standing still in the doorway. He knows the names of many of the Sand People here, and speaks to many of them, but it is Slu Ch’Do who he speaks to the most, who stands in his doorway and stares right through him. “You will,” Slu says, and he thinks back to the day they had rolled him onto his back in the desert and given him a chance. “I know.” 

Boba does not know the sign for debt. Doesn’t know how say _fuck off_ , either, or _I owe you_. He crouches, and picks up the garment, shaking it loose of sand, ignoring the sting of his skin when he touches it. One thing he does know how to say is thank you. “I don't know how. I don't have my father's ship anymore. I have no..credits, or armor. Slu Ch'do, I have nothing."

"You have your name, and you have your life. And you have us."

"I am not one of you. I don't _have_ you.."

Slu Ch'do shakes their head. "Not forever, but you have us now. That is enough to start." They pause. "All you need is your ship and your armor?"

It was all he ever needed before. He swallows. "Yes."

“Then we will help you get what you need to come back someday,” they repeat. "We know the way."

"I don't even know what I can do in exchange."

"But you still promise."

"I do," he sighs.

"You will find a good way to repay us. Mandalorians keep their promises, yes?" 

"Yes."

"So do we," says Slu Ch'do, and they help him into his shirt and urge him back out into the throng of people.

He helps the village elder prepare soup that evening, because he wants to help, and because they slipped him extra servings when he was at his weakest. 

The children ask him questions he lacks the words to respond to, and they giggle at his improvisational replies, all gesture and miming with little substance. They love it. Sometimes, he says things wrong, and the children find these mishaps particularly hysterical, pointing and giggling as they dart about him, imitating his silly mispronunciations. Boba can do little but sit there and fake a disgruntled glare, catching squealing youngsters by the back of their hoods in playful reprimand.

His strength is creeping back in slow increments. The group agrees that when he is able to walk and run better on his own once more, he may join them when they hunt. They promise to train him with a gaderffii, because he has no blaster or rifle to his name. All their generosity piles in his lap like an insurmountable mountain of debt. He takes it gladly. It is good to owe a meaningful debt, just this once.

The stars hang low over the desert that night.

•

  
  
  


He barely registered the pitiful tumble through the sand until it was too late.

He heaves and coughs, gags on nothing-- the air tastes of metal, and acid, and suddenly he is in the pit of the Sarlacc’s belly, the walls around him swollen with poison- a claw digs into his back, and he knows he is being eaten. Knows that something terrible is coming. It happened so fast. 

The flesh of the Sarlacc ripples about him, and he’s coated in its filthy excretions of acidic slime. He twitches for his blaster, but finds that the action only hurts him. Boba’s muscles flex involuntarily. He is acutely aware of every cell in his body, every muscle pulled taut-- it’s all sloshing around him, and there is _meat_ and there are bones in the mixture, and faces he can still recognize the species of. 

They flounder and flinch in the pool of death, their eyes following him. He is pinned to the spot. He couldn’t save them even if he wanted to; they know this, and they exchange their long looks of despair. One long claw slides effortlessly into the flesh of his hip, pouring the Sarlacc’s neurotoxin into him. His muscles burn.

His father's armor is no match for the onslaught of pressure. The durasteel creaks. In the wrist, it has splintered already. Boba feels a terrible sense of trepidation that this is only the start, that the horrors are only mild so far. He is only a pitiful little thing stuck in the belly of a monster, and it's so enormous it can't even feel him writhing inside. He is nothing but a tickle. 

He can hear the voices of a thousand other victims, can see the silhouettes of their bodies absorbed into the lining of the stomach, can hear their pitiful sobs. Boba can feel their anger ripple through him until it is his anger, too. Worse things are coming.

Two months pass, and he is proven right.

Submerged in darkness, there is no hope. There are worse things than violence, the worst of all which is time, endless, endless time. It is _time_ that clings to the ageing dredges of his body, unalive, and promises to digest him for a thousand years. For a millennia, the groaning silhouettes that sink into the walls around him have slowly been metamorphosing to become one with the Sarlacc. _"I’ll keep you with me,_ " a thousand voices whisper. " _You are part of me. I am part of you. We’ll be one, together, indivisible_."

_"I will keep you here forever."_

  
  


He is shaken awake by the hand of a child. 

The world tips on an angle. He hears the little grumble of their voice and blinks his way back to awareness, stunned by confusion. His hands are on his face, and he’s kneeling on the ground beside the bed. “Oh,” he breathes, twitching away to grasp the frame of the cot. 

Two more children are in the tent as well, both grabbing onto one another as they peer at him over the shoulder of their friend. The braver one stands before him, leaning down to look him in the eyes. 

Chaito Kh’urug is this one’s name. He knows that because they’ve put him here in the children’s tent, which is also the guests tent, although this additional purpose is rarely used. Boba feels a twinge of guilt when he looks at the clearly frightened children that hunker behind Chaito. “Did I.. did I wake you?”

“You had a bad sleep,” the child says, and he’s sure that must mean nightmare, judging by the circumstances. “You screamed, I thought..” 

Boba can feel the indentation of his own nails across his face, like claw marks. The bindings they wrap their cots in are strewn about him in disarray. Shame seeps slowly into him. When he was a child, his father gone from his life, he had trained himself no longer to flinch or cry when awoken by a nightmare. He would lay in silence, alone and still, stifling his grief until it slowly died. It seems those days are over. 

He struggles to right himself so he might reply, his signing curt. “I’m alright. You should go back to sleep.”

Chaito does not retreat from their place by his side, tipping their head this way and that, as if to check he is telling the truth. “Did you see the Sarlacc?” 

He breathes in sharply. Of course it was the Sarlacc, of course the child knows this, because this child is so smart, so quick, and children know everything. Pitifully, Boba slowly starts to clamber back onto the cot, fixing the bed wrappings as he goes. Once Chaito has returned to their own bed and turned to him, they say; “It will have to go to sleep someday, too.” 

  
  


•

  
  


The gaderffii stick comes down upon the jakrab’s skull with a resounding _crack_. 

The other two captured creatures writhe inside their mesh traps only a few feet away, each well aware of their own oncoming fates. Boba leaves his companion to handle it, crouching to lift his own quarry with a satisfied hum. It isn’t his first time hunting in the wasteland of Tatooine, but it is the first time doing so without depending on a blaster. As he clips the jakrabs bound legs to the Bantha’s pouch, Boba relishes the feeling of being useful, doing something productive. 

"Boba, you beat that jakrab like he wronged you!" A'Tikku hoots, laughing. "Good job!"

His chest puffs with pride. It's been awhile since he had any reason to feel such a way, but the satisfying weight of the staff in his hand offers some reassurance. There is still more left for him. "Your training was of some use after all, then. I did not waste your time?"

"Maybe, maybe, we will see when you strike at stronger targets."

Two more cracking sounds behind him announce the completion of their hunt for the day. Ahead lies the long path back to the settlement, where he hopes his small participation will repay even a sliver of his debt to them. The elder Tusken shuffles beside him, clipping their own catches to the already large bundle of jakrabs and scurriers they’d collected together. “This one’s fat,” A’Tikku says once their hands are free, and laughs. “I think we are spoiling them with our bait.” 

“Oh, I know. You spoil all the things you catch,” Boba quips, rubbing his own belly, and A’Tikku gives him a very forceful shove. 

The Tuskens spend much time pursuing, trapping, and capturing their hunts. They are nothing if not thorough, and steadfast. Boba can respect their dedication. In reality, the elders name is A’Tikku'oarurrs-- but Boba has been given permission to refer to them just as A’Tikku, because they say it takes him too long to say, and that every conversation cannot take take so long when there is so much to be done in a day. And there really is quite a lot to be done. 

With Boba’s health in slow recovery, he figures it will not be long before he must be on his way. He cannot burden these people any longer than necessary; in time, it will be up to him to go on alone. 

Just as he's about to turn, a flash of a memory flickers before him. He looks down at the perfectly normal sand, in the perfectly normal desert, and feels a swell of concern that perhaps there is something hiding beneath it. Maybe there is a pit waiting below. Boba shifts nervously, hands curling into the fur of the bantha as though he might slip from it and sink into the sand at any moment. 

_You'll come back_ , whisper many voices in his mind. _You won't stay away long. It's not in your nature_. 

A'Tikku must notice the hunched posture of his shoulders and the desperation of his breathing, because suddenly the elder is by his side with a hand on his back. They say nothing, just offering a comforting presence. Boba feels the pull of the mental tether tug at him. Somewhere in the desert, a fragment of his mind is buried in the consciousness of a monster.

 _We're waiting for you_. 

He forces himself to breathe slowly; once in, once out, count to four. Once his lungs have settled, A’Tikku wordlessly helps push him up onto the Bantha, where Boba must sit perched behind the more experienced rider, often resorting to clutching their waist for dear life when the terrain gets rough. 

The worst has passed. He exhales deeply, and adjusts the gaffi stick on his back. It is quickly beginning to feel like an extension of himself; weapons mean much to him, offering security in a time where his wounds leave him terribly vulnerable. Boba hadn’t been permitted to hold a blaster since he first arrived- not like he had one for them to confiscate in the first place, but it doesn't really matter. He feels much safer when wielding A’Tikku’s hand-carved gift, feels the value of the weapon in his hand and remembers what his father had told him of the Resol’nare. That a Mandalorian’s weapons were his greatest tool.

When he leaves these people, he will leave not only with this new tool but also with their knowledge, and hopes that they will accept some of his own in exchange. It will have to be enough, for now. 

  
  


•

  
  


"Fool!" cries Slu Ch'do, rolling down a dune in a billow of sand. They roar as they tumble past him, scrambling for their gaffi stick.

Boba's already gotten his out, having sunk it deep into the depths of the sand like an anchor in the ocean. He's rather comfortable, dangling from the angled slope without a care in the world, staff holding him firmly in place. He barks back; "Not my fault!"

They can't hear him, because they're rather busy flinging themself to the earth below. 

Boba ever so gently wiggles the staff in the sand, allowing it to slowly slide him along the surface unbothered. He lands on his feet at their side, grinning behind the half-mask air filter propped on his chin. Boba has spent nearly sixteen months with these people- he's no stranger to treacherous dune slopes. Their gaggle of companions stand at the top of the hill, laughing, pointing, and shaking their staffs in the air. 

At least _someone's_ in a good mood. 

He crouches to offer Slu a hand, which they accept with crushing force. It's with fair reason, so he makes no comment. With his free hand he asks, "You alright?" 

They gesture noncommittally, waving him off. The two take their time to scan the area very carefully- this should be it. Not much farther, now. Above and behind them the banthas protest as they are guided downwards by their riders. 

"Follow," says Slu Ch'do. They start the final trek. Boba squints against the sun and wishes quietly that he'd been permitted more of the other's protective gear than just the air filter. It's up to the two of them to find the markings A'Tikku had reportedly left behind on the cliff wall after their scouting mission. His father's ship should be close.

As it turns out, Tuskens are nothing if not true to their word. 

To their right, the expanse of the desert stretches out forever. To the left, a massive cliff face rears its head into the sky. Boba wonders sometimes why they never settled among these protective stone pillars, despite his firm support of their nomadic lifestyle. If it works, it works. Still; he wonders. At the end of the cliff comes a sharp turn which they take in stride. 

It is A'Tikku who roars from behind them, high on the back of their own bantha, "Not much farther!"

They're right; just as they turn, two large painted lines are scrawled against the red stone. Boba stiffens at the sight. It must be here. He suddenly misses the rangefinder he's been so long deprived of, knowing how _easy_ this process would surely be if only aided by-

"There!" Slu Ch'do bursts out, bouncing as they point urgently ahead. There it is. To anyone not actively searching for it, it may easily be overlooked. There is a slight bulge of sand raised from the earth below; it has sunken several feet downwards, slowly consumed by the thousand grains of sand. Jango's ship. _His_ ship. Boba almost stumbles over himself in his hurry to reach it. 

Caked with dirt, the thing is nearly unrecognizable. He flings himself against the metal hull, pleased by the ringing echo it makes against the canyon walls- it's real, and it's happening, this is no dream or hallucination. The first real part of his past, back in his hands again. Boba wipes at the dust, revealing the color beneath. His companions come up behind him to inspect the job ahead.

"I knew they'd be excited when I saw it," A'Tikku says to Slu Ch'do as Boba pours over his unearthed ship. "Boba, they always like the- the mechanical devices and fancy things."

"They do like their toys." 

He makes a rude gesture over his shoulder.

The process of uncovering the ship goes faster than he had dared to hope for. They latch large magnets and hooks to the sides of the ship to haul it out. It's hard work, but the combined strength of the banthas, six healthy adults, two children and Boba Fett, they make shockingly quick work of it.

Once it's on flat ground again, the tedious part approaches. It must be cleaned, the air filters freshened up, the muck and sand scrubbed from inside and out; it may not even fly, Boba reminds himself, trying to keep his expectations as low as possible. 

He nearly jumps out of his skin when he finds the panel he's looking for, skimming his hands alongside the exterior. A'Tikku wordlessly hands him a tool to pop it open with. Inside, the mess of wires that greets him isn't half so daunting as he'd concerned himself it might be; his old instincts kick in again, his natural acquaintance to the ship never having faded. It is still his old friend, and his home, in many ways. With a weak trill, a panel lights up, and then another. The emergency hatch slides open with a hiss. 

"Go on, go on!" A'Tikku urges, pushing Boba up the slope of the ship towards the hatch with a stern voice. Behind him he can hear Slu hot on his heels, clambering up the metal. 

When he slides down the ladder, the first thing that he does is cough like a dying man. The place is caked in dust; it'll be a bit before it's in any shape to fly. This is fine, he decides, overtaken by the wave of familiarity that washes over him like a cool breeze. Something in him settles, something raucous and impatient that'd been scrambling for purchase in his idle mind since he first realized he'd lost everything he had to his name. 

When he climbs up into the cockpit it takes all he's got not to hoot, or cry, or punch something. It's all too much. He sucks in several deep, slow breaths, just like he'd taught himself all those years ago when he was just a little boy in a cell with nothing to lose but his mind.

This is it. He's home.

He is relieved that this generous help on their part does not feel quite so burdensome anymore. After months of troublesome recovery, he quickly threw himself into work among them. He did not like to feel useless, nor to look the part. Boba had partaken in his fair share of treacherous water treaties with townspeople, chased off Jawas by the dozens, repaired air filters, patched and dyed fabrics, even tended to the children (to their great amusement)- at this point, he figures he may be approaching fluency in the language as well, oncoming vocal nodules be damned. And for all of this- they recovered his ship. All that's left now is his armor, though that's an issue he supposes may be up to him to solve alone. 

He knows he can't stay much longer. 

Slu Ch'do scrambles into the filthy cockpit beside him, looking about with jerky head movements that give away their clear fascination. Their signing is wide and fast, hands quicker than he's seen them in a long time when they say; "Boba, this is the mucky scrap heap you wanted us to recover so badly?"

He knows it's only teasing, his grin etched rather firmly to his face. Boba pats the seat nearest him. "Sit down. You just don't appreciate quality mechanics!"

They huff, falling into the chair with an air of playful defeat. "Once you get it all and shiny, I'm sure it'll all be worth it." 

Boba looks out the window at the Tuskens who climb up the walls of his ship and shake their staffs in cheerful celebration. The youngest goes skidding down the window, laughing all the way. "It already is." 

  
  


•

  
  


Boba Fett has spent his entire life struggling against the inevitable. 

It just so happens that the inevitable took a taste, and decided it did not want him, either.

The glimmer of the unsetting sun peers through the window of his ship. It winks off the shiny metal surfaces, reflecting off the glass panels. The room around him spins in slow circles, rotating forever, and ever. His chest aches where the pressure of the seatbelt tugs against his ribs, pulling him taut to the chair. He unclasps the latch.

To be back in his father’s ship is strange. Climbing into the cockpit, Boba goes to the window and looks down from orbit at the planet that had both ruined his life and saved it. His fingers skate against the control panel. Just like Slu Ch'do promised, they found Jango's ship. They supplied him with rumors of the armor he'd lost, too. It may only be a rumor, but he has found stranger things with less information before. Soon, his armor and his dignity will all be once more within his grasp. He sinks into the pilot's seat. His time with the Tuskens is done, that much he knows.

He is alone, like he once was every day. He is waiting, patient as old age, for something to happen, to spur him into action. Something hasn’t come yet; so he supposes it may be up to him to seek it out. 

_Come back, Boba_ , whisper the thousand voices that linger in his mind.

The ship begins its descent. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I am walking forever on the path from the border to base camp. It is taking a long time, and I know it will take even longer to get back. There is no one with me. I am all by myself. The trees are not trees the birds are not birds and I am not me but just something that has been walking for a very long time…”  
> \- Jeff Vandermeer, _Annihilation_


	2. drawn out like an ache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fennec Shand awakens strapped to a table, a smooth, cold table. There’s sand in her mouth. There’s always sand in your mouth, when you’re on Tatooine. It’s a terrible place to die. How merciful that she doesn’t have to. 
> 
> Except she's not on Tatooine anymore. She's on a ship. The room feels like it's spinning, but she knows it can’t be; it must be an illusion, must be the swell of blood in her skull sloshing about as she struggles to survive. 
> 
> There is sand in her mouth, and something carving into her organs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for serious injury, description of an abdominal wound, a knife fight, paranoia, so-on.  
> I'm having such a blast writing this.

Fennec Shand is alive.

This is, of course, a big surprise. Her life was surely meant to end in the sandy abyss of the Dune Sea. She had already made her quick goodbyes to no one and to nothing, had counted her breaths and come to the conclusion that her last one had already passed. There would be no more. Quite simply; she accepted that she was dying.

It seems her instincts were wrong. She’s strapped to a table- a smooth, cold table.

There’s sand in her mouth. There’s always sand in your mouth, when you’re on Tatooine. It’s a terrible place to die.

How merciful that she doesn’t have to. 

Except she's not on Tatooine anymore. She's on a ship. The room feels like it's spinning, but she knows it can’t be; it must be an illusion, must be the swell of blood in her skull sloshing about as she struggles to survive. 

There is sand in her mouth, and something carving into her organs. 

Delirious, she jolts violently, lungs burning like fire. The edges of her vision blur and discolor; someone is standing above her, and his hands are covered in blood. She tries to swipe at him with one hand, fist clenched in the weakest punch she’s ever managed, and the blood-slick grip that twists her wrist back down to the table is so firm that it makes her muscles cramp. Twitching against her side, her arm flails for purchase on the table. An examination table? A morgue?

If she is to be killed again, she’d like to strike back before it’s over. 

Something changes; she hears the sound of machinery whirring below, finishing with a satisfying _click_. It's a struggle to lift her head but Fennec still manages, resting her weight on her elbows as she desperately seeks out answers.

The flesh of her abdomen has been peeled back in one smooth sheet of fascia. Where all her organs should reside, there is instead an interwoven mess of machinery. She feels a heavy pressure on her shoulder. 

Fennec falls back against the table, vision going black.

  
  
•

The man tends diligently to her for the first few hours. Or days. Has it been a week? Unlikely. Fennec doesn't know anymore. Laying on a table like a slab of meat does something to a person; each sunrise is just a cue for her to resign herself to the torturous grind of healing. Each sunset is little more than a mockery of her restless sleep. 

The room spins slowly as they fly. They are in orbit over Tatooine, this much she knows, but this is the limit of her knowledge. Some piece of machinery hisses quietly every time the spinning room makes a full rotation; the floor is solid beneath her, the level of gravity reduced just slightly enough that she doesn’t struggle to lift her head. It’s just enough to make her dizzy. Been a while, really, since Fennec spent more than a few hours in a ship. Her self-imposed exile to the wasteland was intentionally long, and her own ship had not survived the journey to reach it. 

Tatooine. What happened on Tatooine? The skin around her incisions stings, still. Was she shot? She thinks it was a young man. Or maybe a Mandalorian. Was it him under that helmet? Him, the man who cut her open? His face is blurs in her memory.

So it is with great effort that she raises her head, and then her hand, slowly curling her legs inwards so she might move to sit up. The strain on her middle is sharp, but with three heavy, steadying breaths, she rights herself. Her fathers did not raise a squeamish, docile child incapable of dealing with change. No- Fennec would learn to live with it. She takes a moment to orient herself, now that her mind is clear.

It is not a room meant for sleeping. The table she’s seated on is pulled from a compartment in the wall; the legs have been folded out from beneath it. The seatbelt keeping her tied securely to the table has been slipped down to her thighs, so as not to apply pressure to her still healing surgical incisions. She unclasps it, shifting to sit more comfortably, legs outstretched in front of her. The room is lined with several seats, each equipped with headrests and seat belts, clearly meant to be secure for flight. In the thin shaft of light above, at the other end of the space, there is a ladder leading to the cockpit. 

To both sides of her are four identical cabinets with shut doors. They are bolted down. There are locks on the upper two, and none below. Two compartments extend longways to both sides of them, likely cabinets full of weapons and supplies. There is a small refrigerator across the way, but she knows this already, because it's where her strange savior- or captor- pulls her medication and frozen rations from every day. To the right there is a passageway, and she hasn’t the slightest where it leads, except that he disappears into it at odd hours. 

Her memory warps and pinches around the edges when she tries too hard to recall her time spent here. There are scattered moments, often gone the instant she tries too hard to recall them. She needs to get to the storage in this ship. She remembers being stabbed. Or shot. Someone carving into her organs and pushing her down against this table.

There are weapons and supplies inside those cabinets against the wall. Something is wrong. The back of her head aches, just at the base where the skull meets the neck. She rubs it, and regrets it, a spark of pain splintering out across her scalp. Fennec hisses, retracts her hand, and pushes the seat belt off the side of the table. It dangles and clanks quietly against the table leg. 

The noise jolts her to attention. She freezes, eyes flying to the ladder. 

The man does not come down to investigate.

Nothing changes. The walls keep spinning, and the machinery hisses with every full rotation. Very slowly and very quietly, Fennec tries to stand. 

Her body fails her. It isn’t a loud kind of collapse; nothing clangs or snaps loudly, her bones do not break, the ground does not ring out and echo when she collides with it. There is only the dull sound of her weight thudding against the grated floor beneath her, and the gasp of air when all the rest of it is punched from her lungs. 

Fennec just lies there for a moment, sweating, incomprehensibly confused. Up and down switch places. The machinery in the walls hisses three more times; three full rotations. It is all she has to depend on when keeping track of time. Another hiss, and she realizes she cannot stand. This is a very big problem, one she doesn’t quite have the energy to think too deeply about. 

Her heart hammers in her chest; glancing once more towards the ladder, she cannot hear a thing except for another hiss of air. 

The man will come down any moment now. She needs a knife. She needs a gun. She needs her organs to do what they were made for, needs her legs and her arms to be solid and strong as they once were. She needs a gun. Fennec scrambles across the ground, raising her bandaged midriff so it does not drag or catch on the grating, using the strength of her arms to pull her across the ground.

One slow tug at a time, she shimmies and stifles each urge to grunt or cry out. The back of her head is on fire, and the sensation in her stomach is so long past simple pain that it is nearly numb. Her muscles clench with every move.

The lowest cabinet is the closest. She’s an arms length away- just close enough to reach out and grasp the handle. 

Fennec glances at the ladder. No one comes. Nothing changes. Her stomach strains against the searing pain of keeping it upright off the ground, and with one twist of her hand the cabinet rolls out in her direction. The room blurs and spins, her vision unfocused, but she does not relent. Her fathers did not raise a docile child. One hand fumbles in the obscured depths of the cabinet, things jingle and clink and then- her palm wraps firmly around a blade. 

Fennec gasps. 

It’s urgent, now, her stomach alight with pain. The room hisses. The machinery in her belly whirrs and clicks. Her palm bleeds profusely, droplets rolling down through the metal grating of the floor to drip on the engine below. 

“I worked hard on those stitches.” The deep voice sends a jolt of terror up her spine. “Don’t go tugging them out now.” 

The world flashes white. Fennec skitters back. In a bolt of adrenaline she didn’t know she had, she rolls onto her back, panting. _Clang!_ The blade bangs against the ground as she scrabbles to grab the knife by the hilt. 

He’s walking closer, now, and she doesn’t know where he came from, or how long it's been. She lost track of the hisses of the walls like she’s now losing her balance. His footsteps are heavy against the grated floor, and his posture only seems to grow wider as he comes closer, slowly approaching from across the room.

Panic sends bolts of hot, burning energy pulsing through her body. In a last ditch effort, her mind overwhelmed by the pain of it all, she throws the blade at him. 

She’s good with a knife.

It slips just past his cheek, barely missing him. 

So it’s hopeless, then. Still tense, still driven by terror, her body pushes her back until she’s up against the leg of the table sitting upright, ignoring the burning sensation radiating from her abdomen. The man stops in place and glances back over his shoulder. It was so close. She was so close. He turns further and, with one sure movement, pulls it out of whatever material it’d sunk into.

He wipes it clean of blood on the fabric of his billowing trousers. Fennec stares. When he looks back up at her, his expression is... approving.

“You’ve got good aim.” Her heart skips a beat. The terror starts to trickle from her, treacle slow. Then he does the most alarming, most unusual thing possible. The man approaches her calmly, crouches at her side, and hands her the knife, hilt out in offering. “You can have it, but you don’t need it here.” 

Her eyes burn, and she doesn’t know why. Fennec curls defensively inwards, grabbing the knife with the hand that does not bleed. “How am I supposed to know that?”

The man shrugs, rocking back onto his haunches. “I don’t know.”

Fennec trembles. Neither seems to want to move first, and she doesn’t know what to say. Looking around her, she realizes she’s made a mess. The mattress has fallen off the table, the seat belt dangling about it. There is blood on most everything she touched, and she’d spilled everything from the cabinet she’d pulled the knife from. Weakly, as if seeking reassurance, she clutches the hilt of it in her hand.

She holds her injured one up, looking, fascinated, at the long incision across her palm. The man’s brow furrows. She sees now that he is a clone; but not one she's ever seen before. She'd thought them all dead, long dead. Who is he? She will find out what it is that he wants from her.

No one does this for free.

In time, she's sure his motivations will reveal themselves. She might have to chip away at him; she doesn't even know his name. 

“Looks like it hurts.”

She nods weakly, and the knife clatters from her grip. The man does not move to touch it. Instead, he leans forward and, with the utmost care, grasps her wrist. “I ran out of bacta a while ago,” he murmurs, then gestures to her belly, “but I’m not so shabby at stitches, seeing how well those’ve held up.” 

He moves to press one hand to her back. “Let’s get you cleaned up. I’ll give you back the knife, once your palm’s alright.” 

Fennec doesn’t say a thing, and slumps against him as he lifts her.

  
  
•

She looks at her strange new companion and wishes he'd let her apply some bacta to the fresher looking scar on the side of his head. Not because she's of a particularly nurturing disposition, or because she wants to take care of him- simply speaking, she'd like to lessen her debt to him by any means necessary. 

His explanation of her implants was a little too vague for her tastes. "I still don't understand."

He leans in and taps his forefinger against her forehead. It’s not an unkind gesture, not taunting or cruel- in fact, there is something playful to it, light. It still makes her flinch. She stares, and he stares back, expressionless. “Your mind suffered too. The blood loss.. lack of oxygen. Part of your frontal lobe was damaged.”

Fennec listens, waiting through the long pauses he weaves between his words. "I assume that's why you decided you needed a knife so urgently, the other day."

She shrugs.

“There’s a chip in there now. A good one. I cut no corners, you can’t- when it comes to the mind.” He straightens and walks away, lowering into a chair by the table.

It explains the dull buzz that she has felt for days. There is a humming in her head- perhaps it’s just a side effect of the throbbing headache. Regardless of what it might be, she feels just about how one might expect any person pieced together from scraps might feel, and goes back to lying flat on her back. She cannot muster much. “Okay.”

"You have to let me know if it's bothering you,” he replies, and settles lower into the chair, sliding back, ankles crossing. “You may have trouble walking, when you first try.”

“How do you know?”

“A part of your brain died.”

“But how do you _know_.” 

They stare at one another, both too fatigued to go in circles. He rubs at his eyes with his right hand, so long she thinks he must be seeing stars when he blinks. “I learned from a field medic who knew what she was doing. And a talented cybernetic smith. And- I’ve seen many people die.”

“You think I will?” Her head falls back against the sparse pillow. “I would’ve preferred it to happen fast.”

“I'm a heartless bastard, sure, but I couldn't just leave you there.” Fennec glares at the rotating ceiling above her, squinting to try and focus her double-vision on the scratches in the surface. He continues, softer now; “I understand how you feel. I-” 

“You don’t.”

“I do.” 

She’s too tired for games. Fennec swallows down the instinct to be petty. She tries to cross her arms over her chest, but that particular stretching of muscles makes her flinch, pulls her stitched stomach taut in a way that forces her arms back down to her sides. 

"I know how it…" just when Boba's about to reply he twitches, like he's seen something frightening. Squeezing his eyes shut he rocks back in the chair, glancing quickly around the otherwise empty room. 

Whatever he's looking for, she doesn't see it. Fennec asks; '"What?" 

He jerks and then, like nothing ever happened, continues very calmly, “I know how it feels, to be left for dead in the desert. To be almost done dying, and be interrupted.”

She tries to push away the nervous questions that gnaw at her. He must have been through something just as grueling as her. That settles her nerves, for some reason. There is no comfort in isolation.

Still- no one should know how this feels. She breathes deeply, and can hear the mild whirr of her mechanic insides brush against flesh. She glances at the burns on his face, and rests one very careful hand atop her midriff, just below the incision. The ship hums around them. “I’m sorry we have something in common.” 

  
  


•

"Hey." 

Fennec groans.

"Hey," the hand on her shoulder shakes her once, and then again. "Are you awake?"

"No," she retorts, and throws one arm over her eyes before letting it slip down, blinking blearily at the man leaning over her. "What?"

He is covered in scars. Of course, that's obvious- she noticed before- but they look different up close. The entire visible surface of his skin is coated in scar tissue, all relatively old and long-healed. He moves to wash his hands, scrubbing rather vigorously at the little sink atop the med cabinet. On his back he has a Tusken Cycler, and what looks to be a pointed staff with a clubbed base strapped to his back. He is dressed in black. 

"We need supplies." He hunches over to dry his hands. "Like I said. Run clean out of bacta. Need more rations." 

The ship must have landed in her sleep. How she didn't notice the rotation of the room as they descended, she doesn't know, but feels somewhat reassured that everything is now still once more. Through the windows, she can just barely make out great dunes of sand. "We're on Tatooine?"

He just grunts. Must think it suffices, because he's suddenly straightened and turned around, rummaging around in one of the nearby containers. 

"That's a yes?"

Looking at the ground, Fennec takes note of the clean, shiny metal. No blood to be seen. He must've cleaned when she was unconscious. The container snaps shut; he turns, a fresh bandage, water, and alcohol in hand. Fennec dislikes the implication.

"What's that for?" She feels a little pathetic, asking question after question, but it's not like he's been particularly forthcoming so far. She has a right to ask. 

"Got to change the dressings before I go. It'll be a bit." They stare at each other for a moment before she realizes that this must be his way of asking permission.

Fennec has already relented enough; she will not say yes, or no, or anything of the sort, and just sort of sags back against the table like he is the most exhausting person she’s ever dealt with. He might just be. With a sigh of resignation, he moves closer. “Got business to attend to, as well. Might be out a few hours. Got to rack up some credits.” 

She almost feels guilty for costing him. Still, she doesn’t apologize for the events of the other day, nor will she thank him just yet. The blood of that scuffle has been wiped up. It was him who chose to drag her here. He will get what he signed up for. 

“Bring me a change of clothes,” she huffs, “when you come back.” 

“Okay.” He pushes her overcoat up. From her ribs to her pants, the massive bandage covers her. He peels back the wrappings very seriously, neither harsh nor gentle, simply getting it done as efficiently as possible. Fennec doesn't want to look. Then again, she has to know. Raising herself on one elbow, she glances down at the aftermath. 

Her flesh is no longer peeled to the side in that frightening sheet. It is gone, actually, the surrounding flesh pressing flush to a panel of black machinery, which is no taller than the palm of her hand and only as long as half her forearm. The abrupt transition between human material and machine confounds her, tempts her trembling fingers to brush the metal. It doesn't feel like anything at all. The man watches her as she inspects his handiwork. She can’t think of much to say. It is bizarre to see such a thing attached to your own body. “Interesting.”

"I'll take you to a doctor," says the man in a voice that indicates embarrassment, or guilt. "A real one, who can adjust the chip in your head, check your--"

"No."

His head snaps up. "I’m no expert. I learned from a good teacher, yes, but-- you need someone who knows what they're doing."

"It's all working well so far." She can’t feel anything in the areas made of metal, or of flexible weave. It does sting around the edges, pulls at the taut muscles of her belly. A row of neatly glued down wires outline it all. 

"Doesn't mean it won't all break down in a month and leave you more of a mess than I found you."

"I don't trust strangers." She shakes her head. "I won't let a stranger dig around in my head."

He grunts. "I am a stranger."

"You didn't give me a choice."

"I saved your life."

To be fair, the man has made every effort to make her position as comfortable as possible. He lifted her body with the utmost care when he first placed the mattress beneath her. The pillow, too, was gently slid beneath her head, these wordless gifts given with no apparent expectation of gratitude. He had helped her use the sonic, covered her with a blanket every night, combed and braided her hair, had helped her eat and relearn to sit up. He closed the wound on her palm with the utmost precision, and never chided her for it.

"You did." Fennec sighs. He saved her life. He also looks like he could kill her in an instant. What a troublesome dichotomy. "I'm mentally well enough now to make a choice, and my answer is no."

He scowls deeply, clearly more than a little unhappy about this statement. The man dabs with an alcohol-soaked fabric at the edges of her wound. “Any other demands you feel like making while you’re at it?”

“Yes, actually,” and he stops his movements, one hand landing flat on the table in dramatic exasperation, sighing. She goes on; “You’ve got to put me in a normal bed sometime. I don’t care if it's the floor. This kriffing table..”

The man nods and keeps dabbing at her abdomen for a bit, gently redressing the wound with a fresh bandage and medical tape. He pulls it awfully tight; makes her flinch, just a bit, and the weak pat he gives her side must be his attempt at reassurance. “All done. Good?” 

Fennec looks down at her bandage, still a little wary after seeing what lies beneath it. A shiver runs up her spine. She wonders if that panel will always be exposed beneath her clothes. He hasn’t said a thing about acquiring any synthflesh. She nods stiffly. “Thanks.” 

"Sure." Turning away, he discards of the old bandage, scrubs at his hands, packs up the supplies. He's thorough and methodical, and wastes no time. Crouching out of her view she hears the sound of a zipper, and he grunts, tugging one boot on.

Passing by the cot he murmurs, "got to go." 

“Hey,” Fennec says, reaching out to grab his upper arm when he's within reach. She knows he’s a clone- but that’s never all they are. They have names, too. She itches to ask him the rude question of how he outlived his thousands of peers. “My name is Fennec Shand."

His muscles tense beneath her hand, eyes narrowed as he meets hers. "I know ."

She jolts. "How?"

"We worked for the same Hutt, Shand."

Fennec freezes. She'd never seen a clone working among the Hutt syndicate before, she's sure of it- and she's not one to forget a face. 

"My name is Boba Fett,” he says with conviction, and squeezes her hand before he pulls away. She stares, wide-eyed, as he goes. “Goodbye, Fennec.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could say everything I've done and still be loved. / I feel this enormous debt to the world for letting me exist and do all the damage my living requires.   
> \- Marty McConnell, _When they say you can't go home again, what they mean is you were never there._


	3. self recognition through the other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Boba?”
> 
> He sighs at the sound of her earnest tone. 
> 
> Fennec stares holes into his head until he turns, brows raised, two darts in hand. He suddenly misses his helmet- at least then the scrutiny of strangers had more to do with the armor than himself. “What?” 
> 
> “What happened to you?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> getting to know you, getting to know more abouuuut youuuu....

"You called it a bedroom.” 

Boba shrugs one shoulder. On the other, he’s balancing Fennec’s weight against his, supporting her as she relearns how to walk. “It’s a room, and it’s got a bed in it.”

“I’m not seeing it.” 

It’s a small room, he’ll give her that. In the cold expanse of space, where any comfort is a luxury, one cannot ask for much. Jango had done what he could with it- there’s a table at one end of the compartment which folds out from the wall, two chairs, and opposite those indulgent amenities are two long, flat beds concealed behind data panels, underneath a dart board and a mess of paper notes.

He lowers her to one of the chairs, which she sinks into with a sigh. 

Unhooking the latch at both sides of each panel, he methodically pulls out the two bunks. One above, one below. It's obvious which one he’d slept in as a child; there is a shoe-shaped dent in the ceiling above it.

As his age crept up on him, Boba had often considered whether the lower bunk might be the more comfortable choice- but it’d felt wrong to take his father’s bed. He presents them both to her with a wide, dramatic gesture, trying hard to shake off the wrongness of offering that bed to a stranger. “Told you.”

Fennec eyes the beds, unimpressed. She sucks in a shaky breath, rubs her hand over her face and, refusing to give into his tease, points above him. “You’ve got shit aim.” 

Who’s she think she’s talking to? His head whirls around to look at the source of her accusation. Of course- it's his dart board. The darts are all strewn about haphazardly, one sunk into the cork panel the board is attached to.

No bullseye in sight. His irritable squint just makes her laugh. “Wasn’t me.”

“Liar.”

Caught him. “How would you know?”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “Doesn't seem like you host many guests. This isn’t exactly a pleasure barge.” 

“I spent plenty of time on those.” The memory alone makes him wrinkle his nose. 

“I’m sure you were the life of the party.” She plucks at the table in the wall, trying to fold it out. With one jerky motion it’s tugged out into position. A screw goes flying off, rolling across the room. “What’s this skiff even called?”

He tries to be surreptitious about it when he leans down to pick up the loose screw, tucking it in his pocket. He notes that he _probably_ should've brought the ship in for repairs after digging it out of the dunes. “Needs a new name.” 

She waits until it's clear he isn’t going to elaborate. "I'll name it for you."

He grunts. "No."

Her legs cross at the ankle. “Gimme a couple of those darts, I’ll show you how it’s done.”

"We'll see about that."

It’s been a long time since he played a game with anyone. They fall into an easy pattern- she scores, grinning, and from that point onwards it turns into pure competition, most rules forgotten as they simply test their accuracy. 

She’s not wrong- compared to the sniper, his natural aim is the barest inch off. Possibly a side effect of not having used a blaster in nearly a year. 

The time ticks by quickly; they fall wordlessly into the monotony of the game. It's nice, he thinks, to savor these small distractions. 

The board is full when he stands to gather them and start again.

“Boba?”

He sighs at the sound of her earnest tone. 

Fennec stares holes into his head until he turns, brows raised, two darts in hand. He suddenly misses his helmet- at least then the scrutiny of strangers had more to do with the armor than himself. “What?” 

“What happened to you?” 

His grip tightens around the darts. Usually, Boba is the type to leave such matters lie. The past is where it belongs. But the wounds that marr his scalp and face are just-barely-healed, and he’d very recently plucked her organs out and replaced them without her permission-- questions like who he is and what brought him here are nothing if not relevant to her current predicament. He supposes that she has a right to ask. 

What to say? It’s a broad question. He sucks on his teeth, takes a moment to consider his response. After all these years, Boba knows that the blunt truth is often the most effective. 

His tone is more clipped than he intends it to be. “I was in the belly of a Sarlacc.”

Perhaps too blunt. It seems that information struck her upside the head, leaving her staring, stunned, when he glances over to investigate her silence. Their eyes meet. “Do you.. remember it?”

“I do,” he says, and doesn’t move an inch, doesn’t breathe or dare to think of what it’s like to remember it. Because it’s more than just remembering. It is a kind of reliving. To look back is to be doused in ice water; to be absorbed in acid.

He likes it better, here, where things are peaceful, and quiet, and they play darts, where he can be a man who saved someone rather than the victim. 

"How did you escape?"

He looks down. "It's not a story worth being told."

Her face twists in concern. It must be incomprehensible to imagine that one might be the sole survivor of something like that and not want to turn it into some epic story for the ages. Boba is not one for folktales- just another thing which sets him apart from the armor he once wore. 

“Let’s try again,” Boba says, trying to hide the desperation in his voice. He just wants things to be normal; wants a moment where a thousand suffering souls aren’t crying out from the recesses of his consciousness, aren’t begging for him to come back to them. 

Fennec is a smart woman. She is quick, and methodical, and nothing goes unnoticed. When his hand spreads over the board to pluck another dart from it, one dart rockets through the gap between his fingers, slicing through another bullseye dart as it lands firmly in the middle. The shock shakes all his ghosts loose, and he barks a laugh, shaking his hand like she’d really struck him.

“I win,” says Fennec. “I get bottom bunk.”

He just says, “Damn,” and leaves the dart where it landed. 

•

  
  


"What's your plan?" Fennec asks one evening, pausing the cycle of their routine.

He sips at the caf he really ought not to be drinking so late at night- they’ve run out of tea- and squints at her. "My plan for what."

"For Bib Fortuna. I take it you're not a fan."

Understatement of the century. Boba wants nothing more than to find that sniveling little sand-eating, two faced, backstabbing, di'kut gravel maggot. He sniffs. "What makes you say that?"

Fennec throws her datapad on the table. She flicks the screen, pulling up an assortment of documents. "We both worked with the bastard. What you said the other day.. sounded like you had a few ideas on what to do with him. I might have a few more."

After only a cursory glance over said documents, it becomes glaringly clear that he's not the only one in the room who wants to burn the Hutt palace to the ground. 

There's a rich treasure trove of contact information, a rough layout of the palace, maps on illicit trade routes, commlinks for spice traders, bounty hunters, mercenaries and assorted gunmen alike- it's only been a few minutes, and he's knee deep in information he's sure the New Republic could use to fill ten prison transports. 

It's impressive. 

"You're not the only one with a reputation," says Fennec, "or a personal vendetta." 

"Why ask me for a plan? It looks like you've got the blueprints down yourself."

Fennec shrugs. "It's not enough. I just want to take him down. That's about it."

"Taking over Hutt Space? That'll leave a power vacuum the size of a Bantha's asshole, my friend. Not sure that'll do much in the long run." He slides the datapad back to her. "There'll be another Fortuna, just like there was another Jabba."

"Maybe there doesn't have to be." 

He sits back, choosing his words very carefully. "You want the throne?" 

"Not my style." Fennec mimics his posture, arms crossing over her chest. "I figure there's few that know their way around the palace, or Tatooine, quite like we do." 

"So you do remember me."

"Who could forget?" She frowns. "Just because we never spoke doesn't mean I didn't know of you."

They pause, considering one another in silence. He saw her aim- she was quite the shot when in a clear state of mind. She is thorough, and strong, with an excessive moral compass that points in all sorts of unknown directions he's not privy to. She also owes him her life. Above all, however, he likes her. May even like to trust her, though the mere thought is unsettling. 

"I wouldn't ever have known it was you if you didn't tell me. I _saw_ Boba Fett, and he was a Mandalorian. What's underneath.." 

Boba looks down. He doesn't know what to say to that. "You could say I've got a common face."

“Yes, you could say I’ve seen ones like it a couple times before.” Fennec shakes her head. "But that’s not what I mean. I mean the _armor_. That's what people always mention. The T-visor looming over you like the eyes of death."

That actually makes him grin, until reality drags him back down. 

She goes on- "I would know. Haven't had much luck with Mandalorians as of late."

He blinks. "You've seen Mandalorians around lately?" 

"Just the one," she murmurs, and he notices how her hand dips below the table to her abdomen. "Was in the company of the man who shot me. Had a tracking fob on me."

"Hm." Some part of him wants to leap to his feet and hunt that Mandalorian down like a dog- he is reluctant to interrogate the reasons behind that desire. 

It might be _his_ armor. Might not be. It's a place to start, at the very least. 

Fennec taps the table surface. "What, did Beskar get too heavy for you? You lose it?"

This is the only part of the story he is willing to tell. "I survived the pit with my armor still on me. Woke up in a Tusken tent in just my linens."

"They stole from you?" 

He scowls. "They are not simple thieves."

"It's in the name.." 

"A name imposed on them." He shifts in his seat, swallowing down the defensiveness that threatens to burst forth. He made a connection with the Tuskens; he would not belittle them for any price. "They saved my life. They were the only ones around who knew how to treat the burns."

"So.." Her legs cross at the ankles like they always do when she's engrossed in the conversation. "Who's got your armor, then?" 

Boba shrugs. "Jawas. Settlers. Some sniveling thief out for a shiny boon."

"Probably Jawas."

".. Probably Jawas.” They laugh simultaneously and Boba can feel it, strengthening the fragile trust that has slowly crystallized between them. He smiles, and wills it not to shatter. 

"Might be useful to track that down, if we'd like to make an impression." 

"We?"

"I've got contacts in all the highest crime syndicates in the system, a craving for some revenge against our former employer, and no desire for a throne." Fennec smiles. "You've got the name, the time, the skills, and the face- or, I figure, the helmet."

The helmet, the helmet. The damn bucket that gifted him an identity. All his life, Boba had thrashed about, kicking and screaming that he was _not_ just a clone; not just another face in an ocean of identical twins. Funny that the face of a Mandalorian, meant to offer uniformity with the masses, was now the only thing to set him apart. "What makes you think I've got time?"

"You played darts with me for six hours this week."

He scowls.

"Just.. consider it. Don't have to say yes or no yet." Fennec slides the datapad back like it's the most tedious task of her life. "Have a look over my information."

"Won't be as easy as just bursting in, guns blazing."

"No, that's just the fun part. Got to formulate a plan beforehand. Need to have a foothold in the system- agreements, negotiations. To topple the king, you've got to destabilize the court."

"You've thought a lot about this."

"You haven't?"

He thinks of every night he spent lying awake, fantasizing about wringing the necks of Jabba or Bib, and crushing Solo under his boot like the worm he was. There is a long list of people who have wronged him in terrible ways, and he's got a long list of plans for them. He just didn't think he'd have another gun at his side. 

"I have." He relents, and drinks another gulp of caf before he sits up to look over her data in earnest. "Where do we start?"

It’s easy to let the time slip by when orbiting a planet. Time is a translucent thing, here, more a suggestion than a reality, and he takes it for granted as they pass datapads across the table. 

He even pours forth his own deep pockets of useful contacts and well-kept secrets. They might all think he’s better than dead, but perhaps the element of surprise will play more in their favour than against them. 

After nearly three hours of diligent work, their supply of caf quickly dwindling, Boba notices how long it’s been silent. He blinks away the fatigue only to witness Fennec’s own; exhaustion bends her back in a slouch so steep it hurts him just to look at. Her face pressed against her fist, elbow propped on the table, she is long gone. 

Boba cleans. He tucks away the datapads in safe storage; folds his chair and straps it to the wall, pours out and stacks their tin cups in the basin of the main room, methodically scrubs the table and finally, tucks his arm beneath her own, one slung beneath her knees, gently lifting her off the chair. 

She stirs, groans against his arm. Using his knee, he slides the legs of the table away so it folds down against the wall once more. All things secure, latched tightly in place, he is satisfied. 

When he lowers her into the bottom bunk, the reverie breaks. Fennec grabs his arm with one hand. He almost panics- thinks, I’ve upset her- and she tugs him down into a hug. 

He nearly loses his balance, catching himself on his elbows to both sides of her, frozen in place. It’s not a mistake, not an attempt on his life. Her fingers dig into his back like she’s frightened he might dissipate in a cloud of smoke. 

Boba Fett is not a hugger. He’s not even a nice person. 

Nonetheless, because he is a human and not yet made of stone, he eases ever so slightly into the embrace, his arms tightening around her shoulders. Childishly, he wills it never to end. “Thank you, Boba." she murmurs into the crook of his neck and then, like it hadn’t happened at all, loosens her hold and rolls to her side. 

Stunned into silence, he stands stock still to the side of the bed, nearly striking his head on the upper bunk when he straightens. 

Well. That’s new. He shuffles his feet and kicks his mind back into motion, rigidly throwing his bandolier onto the hanger, gaffi and rifle stashed in the corner, boots already off by the door. 

There’s nothing more to do. He looks anxiously about the room, like there must be some additional task to busy himself with besides the itching concern that is newfound friendship. 

There’s nothing else to be done. He flicks the lights off, and heaves himself into the bunk above. 

Looking back on the many long years of his life, Boba could count close embraces on one hand. Most had occurred in the past months among the Tuskens, and even that still made him reel. 

He tugs the worn wool blanket over himself very tightly, like it might shield him. Boba Fett does not hug, does not have friends, does not indulge in the softer sides of life.

As a boy, sometimes, the other clones had tried to befriend him. Every interaction had been brief, and they only really tried it when they were of an age that resembled his own, boyish and young- after that, they knew better. Jango had told him time and time again that there was little to separate him from the other boys besides his love for him, and for Boba, that had been enough. But to _befriend_ the people who shared his inherited face was an entirely different level of existential fright that he simply hadn’t been equipped for.

He has to remind himself that he is an independent person. More than a clone. Not part of a hivemind. He is Boba Fett; he is Jango Fett's son and, above all, he is an individual. He sleeps flat on his back, and snores well into the night. He prefers to bathe in cold water, and always chooses tea before caf. He is a person with thoughts of his own, and ideas; he has made mistakes, and he has done good things. 

He looks over at the mirror in the room. From this perspective, he can just barely make out the dark silhouette of Fennec’s shape as she lies on the bunk underneath his. He goes over it all again. I am Boba Fett, son of Jango Fett, I am an individual, I sleep flat on my back, I have thoughts of my own, and ideas, and I have made terrible mistakes, and I have done good things. I am Boba Fett, and I have a friend. I am one of many. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have made my home anywhere I still have a name.  
> Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, _Sunday, I-80_


	4. anonymity amongst the wreckage of the earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their breath intermingles; his face smells like hot copper. Boba tilts his head to one side, slowly cupping the back of the man’s neck with one hand in something akin to a caress. 
> 
> The intimacy of the action makes the man nervous- he knows this, because he can feel his heart pounding beneath his fingertips. “What are- what are you doing?”
> 
> “Doing you a favor,” Boba says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: violence, guns, slavery, horror.
> 
> when tuskens are speaking in my fic, they/them pronouns are used to indicate the genderless nature of pronouns in their language.

Boba can feel himself sinking into the lining of the Sarlacc’s stomach. 

Someone’s arm is wrapped around his waist, gentle as an embrace. Two claws, maybe teeth, press firmly against his back. Strange forms shift and writhe under the gelatinous layer of flesh that surrounds him. It is so vile, so diseased here, that all his sluggish mind can do is desperately devise a way to escape.

The Sarlacc’s blood is not hot. It is a chilling, soothing ointment sliding through his veins, so bitter cold and acidic that it stings as it trickles through him. Through this connection, he is tethered to the other victims. It is all that keeps him breathing. The wall is alive, or perhaps the bodies inside it are simply not dead.

The pain will go on forever. 

There is a creature here, one who speaks for the Sarlacc. It was a man, once. It lived and breathed, had flesh to call its own, had nerves and skin and all the other things Boba so desperately clings to in what eternally feels like his final moments. It can talk, but he doesn’t like when it does, because it speaks with the vocal cords of thousands. There is that central baritone, however, humming at the center, which he focuses on to block out the overwhelming drone of voices. “ _Boba Fett_ ,” it murmurs, and he grimaces, “ _Boba Fett, you’re afraid._ ” 

Does it expect anything else? He feels an artificial swell of fear, confusion and deep sorrow flush through him. He must be experiencing the emotions of the other victims through their blood-bond. He can’t stop it, but he tries his hardest to discern those feelings from his own. Something has to stay his own, or he won’t survive. He tries to remember himself. I am Boba Fett, he says to himself, I am a person with my own thoughts and ideas, I am my father’s son. 

“ _Your father’s son_?” The voices rumble. “ _Your father_?”

There is his father’s body dangling across from him again, headless, hung by his hands from the curved teeth of the Sarlacc. The hallucinations never seem to stop.

He steels himself against the sight. He's seen it a thousand times before, his nightmares haunted by that silhouette. But Jango did not raise a son who would submit so easily to fear- if he was to die, he would do so with conviction, leaving claw marks as he went.

"Yes." He bites out. "My father's son."

The air is so hot and cloying in the body of the Sarlacc that he barely registers the world around him. The beast grumbles, and those voices sound sharper when they reply. " _I lived once. I was just like you. And you will be just like me_."

"Pathetic," Boba spits. "You're- you're nothing but an.. amalgamation of people, now. You're not like me, you're nothing like me."

" _Soon_.."

"No." He flinches, arm twisting abruptly. The chance is there. "You're nothing but a parasite. You had a life once, parents who loved you."

 _"I_ **_am_ ** _the Sarlacc. We are one thing."_

Boba jolts in place when the tooth in his back slips out of his skin. He keeps pushing. "You're dead! At least the Sarlacc is- an animal, a plant- it follows the rules of nature."

" _I am the Sarlacc_!" The chorus of voices screech.

"You don't have the luxury of being an animal. You're being used. You had a chance once, at life. At a fair death. It's gone on too long."

The walls of the beast's belly constrict, the oozing acid pit bubbling. Steam rises from it in fierce gusts, the foul stench filling his head with the smell of metal and decay. The wall he's leaning against twitches and he realizes in one striking instant of clarity that he can move-- whether by sheer force of will or due to the retraction of the neurotoxin-tipped claws, he doesn't care to know. 

Boba twists his body in one fast motion, dragging himself up, cringing as the stinging nettles of the stomach's lining scrape through the fabric of his flight suit. The waves of saliva dripping down the walls slip over his skin, drip by agonizing drip. He coughs. "Doesn't it make- make you _angry_? The beast dissolved you. It made you pathetic. It stole your voice just like it stole your life." 

The Sarlacc screeches like a scorned child.

The wall swells behind him and he sees it- a massive tooth swinging in his direction. Boba Fett will die fighting and screaming or he will not die at all. Twisting his body, he turns so it might collide with his jetpack rather than his flesh. He gasps a breath just before impact, and then-- 

The realization that this is just another nightmare washes over him in a cold wave. 

He sits stock straight in bed, clawing red marks down his face. "It's not real. It's not real."

When he looks to the side, he knows he is not alone at all. Fennec stares at him in the mirror.

 _"You never left,"_ whispers the Sarlacc, and Boba doesn't know what to believe.

•

"You actually want to keep the damn palace in one piece?"

Fennec shrugs, talking around a mouthful of bread. "I'd like to sleep in a place where the walls don't spin. It’s nauseating." 

"Well, excuse me. Wasn't aware my accommodations were so lacking."

She rolls her eyes. "Now you know." 

They have to be quiet- there are ears all around- but not _that_ quiet because, of course, most of the crowd around them is quite drunk. It was Fennec’s idea to come here; claimed she needed to stretch her legs and be on solid ground. 

She's made leaps and bounds in her recovery, which is rather impressive, considering her staunch refusal to see anything akin to a medical professional. 

They've been confined to his ship for the better part of three months now, excluding his few excursions, all in the name of filling his pockets once more. This time, Fennec insisted on tagging along- it was an easy job, local, and he had the dignity to admit she’d done most of the work for him in one swift move. The only evidence of her scuffle with the target was one slim tear on her glove. 

It won’t be much longer until their pockets are heavy with credits once again- it’s not _guild_ work, but Boba doesn’t bother with those fools anymore- and besides, it ought to pay well. 

“Besides,” she continues, smearing a fat glob of butter onto another slice of toast, “wouldn’t it be nice to stake a little claim? You’re the one who said we can't leave a power vacuum. Can’t exactly dethrone the king and steal said throne if you pulverize it.” 

He shrugs. Some passing drunkard stumbles by their table on the way to harass the band. The place is cramped, but this does little to discourage Boba’s enthusiasm as he tucks into the bowl of stew in his hands. They’ve got plenty of time before their client arrives; he won’t be wasting it.

“You eat like someone’s going to steal it from you.” 

Boba scowls, swallowing. “What? It’s good stew.” 

“You think all stew is good stew.”

“Maybe you’ll have to try and make a pot of it so I can discover bad stew.”

"You can't judge my cooking if I haven't judged yours." 

"I've cooked plenty for you," Boba says indignantly, frustrated that he must stop eating to reply.

She shakes her head, waving a piece of bread at him in admonishment. "Heating up rations doesn't count."

"You just haven't tried my Parwan nutricake yet."

"If it doesn’t come out of a nutrient packet, I’ll be impressed."

"I should've left you in the desert."

Fennec doesn’t retort as quickly as he’d anticipated. 

“What?” He demands, spoon halfway to his mouth, but her continued lack of response is concerning, to say the least. She shakes her head just slightly, eyes trained over his shoulder. His neck tingles uneasily. “Has our client arrived?”

“ _No_. Don’t do anything,” she murmurs so softly he nearly misses it. “Say nothing. Let it happen.” 

He lowers the bowl, hand sliding surreptitiously beneath the table to brush the blaster on his hip. The establishment is small, just busy enough that a fight inside would surely catch bystanders in the crossfire. That’s never bothered Fett before, but just this once, he considers the value of their continued anonymity. 

A Weequay approaches their table, pressing uncomfortably close into their space. His clothes are unremarkable, but his belt is bulky with weapons and tools, each small movement jangling the chains and keys against his belly. The stranger leans in with a smarmy smile. “ _Hi_ , Shand.”

“I don’t have time for this, Wonlo.” 

“Oh, but you do!” laughs the Weequay. “Don’t worry about your client- I’ve handled that.” 

Fennec tenses. “I thought we agreed-”

“I never agreed to anything. You and me, I think we've got a lot to talk about.” He’s about to reach out, likely to pat or grab at Boba’s shoulder, but thinks better of it at the last moment. “Your friend here won't mind if I steal you away for a bit, I’m sure?” 

“I’m sure he won’t.” Fennec doesn’t even look at him. The assumed immunity of their pronounced deaths disappears in a cloud of smoke around them as she slides out of the booth, ignoring the hand he extends to her. 

“And I’m sure you won’t be needing that, either.” Wonlo puts a fist to her chest, the other pointing at the rifle on her back. “We’re just gonna have a nice chat. No need to complicate things.” 

When Fennec doesn’t move an inch, Wonlo leans in close to her face and says more forcefully; “ _Leave_ it, Shand.”

She complies stiffly, tugging the weapon up over her shoulders and letting it clatter onto the table. The leather of Boba’s gloves creaks as he resists lashing out, flexing once, twice, before gently curling around the rifle and pulling it closer. 

He can’t comprehend why she’s going along with this- why they can’t just grind this pathetic idiot into the dirt where he belongs. Between the two of them, it wouldn’t even be a challenge. 

Fennec throws Boba a warning glance. Around them, the clatter and chaos of the bar goes on; the music plays louder and the crowd hoots, clapping as some new singer steps up. Boba keeps a close eye on her- she’s staring at the back of the room like she did when she first saw him, face still and cool as a smooth stone. 

One hand on Fennec’s back, Wonlo gives Boba a condescending little wave, allowing him just the barest glimpse of what he’s holding in the palm of his closed fist. It’s a trigger button. He’s not sure what it’s for, but is certain he’d rather not find out. He ushers her away from the table, leaving Boba sitting alone with a platter of bread and meat, stew, and a rifle. He turns to watch them as they slip through the crowd. Fennec never once looks back- her eyes are trained on a young girl who, once they are at the door, breaks from her stiff posture to follow at Wonlo’s heels.

This is his chance. Shand is gone, and he’s alone. He can leave, now, and move on with his life.

Meal forgotten and rifle slung over one shoulder, Boba throws some credits onto the table before scrambling to follow them. 

Digging into the deep pit of his memories, he cannot recall a Weequay called Wonlo. Doesn’t know of a Kessurian girl with montrals over her ears, either, but then again, he’s lived a hermetic life first in the belly of a monster and then in the endless expanse of the Dune Sea for several years now. It’s not like he’s the ideal receptacle for current news. 

Outside, the sun beats down in one solid, burning beam. Dust clouds the air, smoke and voices clogging his line of sight as the city center bustles about their lives- he suddenly wishes he still had that air filter A’Tikku had lent him. Squinting through the blur he spots Fennec’s red hair ties, her back turning into an alleyway. Behind them trails that girl, wrists held firmly to her sides. 

Winding down the alleyways in silent pursuit of the trio, Boba watches their every move. Why bring a _child_? Boba wonders, but the question sours in his mind as he comes to the only logical conclusion.

Wonlo stops abruptly, rolling his shoulders. They’re too far to overhear, but he takes his large bag off his back with the stiff movements of someone in pain, and hands it to the girl to hold for him. She slumps under the weight, taking it on without protest. 

Someone to Boba’s side bumps into him, spitting on the ground in his direction. He ignores the stranger with one fluid side-step, still trailing behind from afar. In his mind, he goes over what weapons he knows Fennec has on her- quite a few, really, a small blaster, several knives- not including the one she keeps wound into her braid. She herself will likely escape from this unscathed… whatever _this_ is. It still feels wrong to abandon her now.

When the group slows their steps, leaving the tightly knit maze of alleys and backroads for a more open space, Boba tucks himself behind a wall and waits from a distance. 

The building they approach is strikingly familiar; a bulbous, sandy dome protruding from the ground, with several staircases extending around it into the ground below. A submerged building is not exactly uncommon in the harsh conditions of Tatooine, but this one is different. There's a symbol over the door that he recognizes. 

The group that last laid claim to the damn building is dead. He knows that, because he made sure of it. Cleared it out for new management, just around the time before-

Before the Hutt empire crumbled. It all clicks together in his mind. 

At the door, the enslaved girl stumbles, something falling from the bag on her back. Her reflexes are fast when she scrambles to pick it up again, but it's no use- Wonlo growls. She seizes violently, the taser-chip in her neck going off with a crackle that even Boba can hear. 

His fists clench at his sides. She's just a girl. She's just a girl- and I've killed plenty like her, he thinks ruefully, watching as she scrambles silently back to her feet like nothing happened. Like it was nothing new. 

Fennec tries to help her up but the Weequay holds his hand out again, displaying the button in his palm like a warning sign. They all understand what that's for, now. 

Boba decides that he will keep Wonlo alive just long enough to know what's coming before he kills him. 

Once they've entered the building, Boba has no trouble slipping in the back entrance. He may have fallen out of practice with bounty hunting, but his memory has never lost its sharpness. Descending the winding stairs, he listens for company; the place seems empty but for the distant footsteps of the trio he's pursuing. 

The tunnel before him is long and winding, the fans in the walls humming quietly. It’s obvious which room the group’s passed into, the sound of their muffled conversation echoing against the stone and metal all around him, guiding him to the right and down a long aisle. Keeping his footsteps light, Boba hurries closer, halting just outside the door. He listens carefully when Fennec speaks, his back pressed to the wall.

"I'm worth nothing to you, Won. Didn't you hear? I'm _dead_." 

The Weequays laugh is raspy and loud. "That pathetic guild boy did brag about that- knew I was right to doubt him. Come on. In what world could _he_ have taken down _the_ Fennec Shand?"

A beat of silence. 

"The bounties on me have been fulfilled."

"Doesn't matter. I know someone who might pay a pretty price for your head in a display case."

Someone else laughs- another person in the room, muffled but distinct, a masculine voice that Boba doesn’t recognize. Just another obstacle; not like it’ll trouble him too much.

"What a waste," she replies.

"If I trade you in, a lot of prices on my head disappear. It's that simple."

He could stand here and listen to them argue for a while, but-- Boba Fett doesn't like to waste time.

He inhales low and quiet, drawing in all his strength, all his years of training, his depthless rage. He has to do it fast. This will be his only opportunity. 

He bursts into the room in four swift steps, blaster held out before him.

Everyone present freezes in place. The space is cramped, draped with curtains and dangling curtains of beads; strange trinkets jingle and clank in the air when the Weequay rocks back against them, flinching at the sight of the blaster. 

“Thought I told your _friend_ here to stay back,” he hisses to his captive audience. To his right, Fennec shrugs. The tension crackles in the air, sending a thrill of adrenaline up Boba’s spine. There’s another mercenary in the room- a human with nothing in his hands but a knife. 

Once again, stuck in the thick of the action. He almost likes it when the stakes rise.

Wonlo holds out the trigger button in his hand, more a threat than a blaster might’ve been. The girl it’s tethered to trembles at the sight of it, hunching back against the wall. He does not move his blaster away from the face of the man who holds it.

“I suggest you set that down now, Weequay, or we’ll have to complicate things.” 

“Already complicated,” he replies. “Always complicated, when _Shand_ here’s involved.” 

He spits her name like a curse. It makes Boba’s lip curl. 

With a crack that threatens to make his eardrums burst, the button is shot out of Wonlo’s hand. It wasn’t him who pulled the trigger- Fennec, with a blaster in hand, dives to catch it before it might strike the ground. The bleeding, stumbling man clutches his hand and spins to grab it first- 

Boba is at the Weequay’s back in an instant. 

He wraps his arm around his throat from behind, blaster to his head. The noise the man makes is so pitiful he thinks it may be an act of mercy to shut him up. Beside them, the girl trips and falls back against the wall. The mercenary across from them looks like he’s staring into the mouth of a krayt dragon, wide-eyed, speechless. Boba grins. Who brings a vibroblade to a blaster fight?

If Boba were a better man, he might consider that his merciful treatment of the Tusken Raiders, who were, too, known for their brutality, should perhaps extend to the otherwise corrupt scum of Tatooine as well. Real compassion is all-encompassing; it extends to those you condemn just as it does to those you love.

Boba Fett is not a better man. He's not even a good one. He presses the barrel of his blaster to Wonlo’s head and blows his brains from his skull in wet chunks.

Across the room, Fennec has pulled out her blaster and aimed it at the blond-haired man. Wiping the blood from his face, Boba lets Wonlo’s limp body slip to the ground with a dull thud.

“Hey, hey. We don’t have to- we can make a deal.” The man visibly shudders when Boba steps over Wonlo’s corpse. He slowly lowers his knife, both hands in the air.

“We don’t make deals with people like you anymore,” says Fennec, jerking the blaster at him. “Get on the ground.” 

The man doesn’t do as he’s told. Disrespectful. With one firm shove, Boba throws a punch that lands him flat on his back, knocking the wind out of him, blood spurting from his nose. He gasps and drags himself backwards on his elbows, scrambling away. “We were just doing business, just-” 

“What kind of business do you do, exactly? Hm?” Boba crouches slowly over the prone man, a foot to each side of him, jerking his chin in the direction of the girl. “I can’t imagine you need to keep a child around for it.” 

“Doing her a favor. We treat our employees just fine.”

He snorts. _Employee_. “I think our definitions of that word differ.”

“What are _you_ doing keeping that traitor around?” 

He glances over at Fennec. She’s kneeling only a few yards away, blaster still aimed directly at the man below him. Behind her stands the girl- trembling, but resolute, fascinated, like she’s been waiting all her life for this moment. Maybe she has been. The room is eerily silent, no sound but for the creak of his boot as he eases his knee down onto the man’s chest, leaning in close. 

"I can pay you," he stutters.

Their breath intermingles; his face smells like hot copper. Boba tilts his head to one side, slowly cupping the back of the man’s neck with one hand in something akin to a caress. 

The intimacy of the action makes the man nervous- he knows this, because he can feel his heart pounding beneath his fingertips. “What are- what are you doing?”

“Doing you a favor,” Boba says, and snaps his neck in one fluid motion.

It’s over.

The silence that follows is jarring. 

Hands sore from the effort, Boba flexes his fingertips at his sides and lets the dead man fall to the ground with a heavy _thunk_. 

It is Fennec who breaks the silence first; slipping her blaster back in its holster, her hands firm on the girl’s shoulders, she turns her away from the gore. “You okay? It looked like that hurt.” 

The child just nods, straining to turn so she might look once more at the dead men behind her. Fennec directs her gaze instead towards the man still standing. “This is Boba. He saved my life." She rubs her back reassuringly. "You have nothing to worry about with us.”

He takes a moment to look over the girl. She can’t be older than fourteen- her brown eyes watch him carefully, acutely aware of the brutality he’s capable of. “Where are you from?” He asks, stepping very slowly forward. Boba wracks his brain, trying to recall where her kind might be found. “Kessuria? Kiros?” 

She shakes her head with one jerky motion. “I was born on Tatooine. I don’t know my parents.”

“Okay.” He exhales slowly. Boba doesn't know what's come over him; once, he would have left this girl where he found her, might've abandoned Fennec in the bar, or most likely left her to die on the dunes. He would have left no witnesses to this scene. 

But he knows, too, the feeling of being a very small thing in the belly of a monster. 

The helplessness. The rage. 

He won't leave her to scramble out on her own. “We’ll figure out somewhere for you to go.” 

"I can't just leave." The girl touches her neck where she was tazed. A dark smattering of discoloration splinters out from the area. "They'll find me again."

"They're all dead," Boba says a tad too bluntly, but it hardly seems to bother her.

"You're not listening." She jerks her chin in the direction of the first man he killed. "They're not the only ones who run this place. They'll come back and see… this. I'll just be passed along."

"There's more from where these bastards came from," Fennec confirms resolutely.

Understanding dawns on his face. She'll be pursued within days, then, by whoever comes next in charge and inherits her. Boba nods solemnly and points to the bruise. "I know some people who will protect you. And I can dig that chip out of your neck." 

Fennec makes a face at his phrasing. Regardless, this persuasion must suffice. She nods calmly, stepping out from under Fennec’s hold on her shoulders. He figures that after all she's seen, this gamble is nothing if not worth the risk. What has she got to lose? 

Before they go, Boba goes digging in Wonlo and his companions bags for any credits or useful trinkets. Fennec makes a beeline for a safe across the room; she punches a code into the number pad and it pops open with a click. She plucks out a bag of wupiupi, credits and peggats, followed by several data and holo pads that she slips into her bag. 

From deep within the safe, she carefully procures what he instantly recognizes as an explosive device, and a trigger to go with it.

He stiffens. "What's all that for?"

"You never know what we might need when we go through with the plan." A pause. "And it's best not to leave it here for whoever finds these two."

She adjusts the heavy bag on her shoulder, coming over to pull Boba's cloak off his shoulders. He doesn't object, even when she tucks it around the girl, hood up to hide her montrals.

"I let them bring me here for a reason, Boba." She makes a face at the corpses behind him. "It'll come in handy when we deal with Fortuna. Trust me. _Her_ life isn't the only one that Wonlo ruined."

“Hm. What’s her name?” Boba asks, directing the question towards Fennec as he passes her a vibroblade from Wonlo’s belt. They know each other- that much is clear.

“I’m Tulan Holst.” The girl says herself, eyes burning through him.

•

That evening, back in his father's ship, Boba carefully extracts the tracking chip. 

He hopes someday, should he make any more friends, there will be no need to take them apart and put them back together again.

She doesn't flinch or cry when he cuts her open. Instead, she stretches the high column of her throat, chin up, like he's bestowing some great- if overdue- honor upon her. 

Once the incision is cleaned and the flesh divot patched with bacta, Boba takes the blood caked chip and drops it in the palm of her hand. In time, her wound will heal, the skin thicker than it was before. Every time she turns her head it will be a taut, firm reminder not to look back at where she came from. 

She turns the tracking chip in her hand and her face alights with a cold, confidential smile. He hands her a little hammer, meant for breaking little things, and she uses it to crush the chip to dust.

Tulan tries to hand the hammer back to him, but he won't take it. She tucks it in her pocket. This will be her first possession. 

•

"Are you sure this is the right way?"

Fennecs voice comes clearly over the ear pieces they both wear. A small investment, but Boba figured they'd be needing them if they were to be working together from here on out. The wind is hot and gritty with sand; the landspeeders hum as they rocket over the broad expanse of the desert. 

"Of course," he replies over the bite of the wind, "you doubt my navigation skills now?"

The Kessurian girl clings to Fennec's waist, perched behind her on her speeder. "No!" The sniper barks. "It's just that Sand People aren't particularly forthcoming about their location."

"Not to strangers." he huffs like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "We hunted together. I know a scout who ought to be following a bantha migration this direction just about now.” 

"Oh."

Boba points at the darkening night sky, though he knows her eyes are most likely trained ahead. "See that star?"

"Yes." 

"They're following it too."

Appeased by this answer, they focus once more on the quiet journey ahead. Tatooine isn't a kindly place to orphans, to freed slaves- frankly, it's not kind to anyone. It'd be a _long_ time before they might come across some charitable local willing to take in a strange child, no strings attached. He wouldn't trust most willing to do it, either. This will have to do.

Up ahead, a shape begins to take form in the distance; three silhouettes, two smaller than the other. He was right. The hunt is on. 

"They've got a rifle trained on you, Fett." Fennec says, sliding her helmet shut with one quick motion. "Sure they're friendlies?"

"Absolutely not!" Boba chuckles, and kicks his speeder into a lower gear. With one free hand, he pulls the gaderffii staff off his back and shakes it in the air. 

The two Tuskens wave their own staffs in response. 

Fennec slows alongside him. "You make strange friends." 

When they come to a halt across from the bantha and its riders, the first thing they get is threatened. 

A'Tikku points and says- "I'll throw you right back in that pit! Boba, you said you were leaving!"

"I'm happy to see you too, A’Tikku'oarurrs-"

"I told you to stop wasting time trying to pronounce that already!" 

He laughs- this day was not a lighthearted one, in fact it, was very sad- but to see a friend and to be laughed at kindly soothes his raw nerves. "I've got a friend who needs help."

He glances back to his companions, each of whom are staring in abject fascination. He supposes it's unlikely either have ever seen a non-Tusken speak the language. It can be.. jarring. 

"You have friends?" Asks A'Tikku in a gargling hoot, hopping off the bantha's back to come take a better look. Their voice softens. "The younger one?" 

Boba nods, ushering Tulan over to his side with a wave of his hand. 

"This girl was enslaved by a mercenary group. They’re only a child, born here, parentless. I already owe your people a great debt. I understand if you will not accept more. But, I ask you to consider.."

The Tusken holds up one silencing hand. "They’re not yours?" 

He shakes his head, nose wrinkling. 

"Then you will be under no debt to us if we take them in. The child is not yours to give. Did not ask to be brought here, and never could they steal our water, if they did not have a right to it themself." They nod vigorously. “They can stay with us, they can stay.”

"I see." Boba inclines his head in acceptance of what he's been told. To his side, Tulan comes forward, head held high.

"Tulan, this is A'Tikku. They are an elder." Boba switches to common- though the elder understands very little of it, they wave when pointed to. Boba then gestures to the younger Tusken still sitting atop the bantha, right around Tulan's own age. "That's Uarra- they are tracking a bantha, so Uarra might capture and train one to prove themself as part of the clan."

"Hello," says Tulan. 

Uarra shouts a greeting. A’Tikku titters about the child, looking her up and down in friendly curiosity. They shake her hand, then, how Boba had shown them some months ago. Tulan looks behind her and says to Fennec; "I think it'll be okay."

The moon is low over the desert, casting everything in cool blue. Stars watch overhead, enraptured by the scene. Tulan is a brave child, and the Sand People shall help her take that resolve and hone it into a fine tool. 

Fennec comes no nearer. "You're alright with staying here?"

The child nods and moves away to pet the bantha, hands scrubbing gently through her fluffy mane of fur. 

Content, Boba is ready to leave- but A'Tikku squeezes his arm gently. "Boba, Boba, we will take care of the child. Don’t worry. But, I should tell you something before you go. Should have told you before." 

"I'm listening."

"Krayt Dragons can eat Sarlaccs whole." The elder Tusken leaves that dangling between them for a moment before they grunt, pointing to the east. "They have enemies too. The pit will eat anything you give it, even to it's own detriment."

His mouth feels dry.

"The burst must happen deep in the belly, because that is closest to all that keeps it alive." A'Tikku, in their strange, cryptic way, speaks with an urgency he wants to rise to. "The Sarlacc will open wide to eat the world and then it will choke on it, and die."

Translation; Sarlaccs are not immortal. 

Simplification; it can die. Meaning; he can be its enemy, too. 

So it is with new meaning in his every movement that Boba clasps A'Tikku's hands in his own and straightens, walking back to his speeder with quick, determined steps. 

Boba looks back at the young girl with the hammer in her pocket and the hole in her throat. 

"You live long, now, Tulan," he says, and perhaps other people might find such a goodbye ominous, but she nods and bows her head like it's the most natural thing in the world. 

Together, he and Fennec return to their landspeeders and set off into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to gather all the terrible selves and minutes  
> and show them the trees, and the way the rain
> 
> has just abated so the air has ocean in it  
> though we’re dry and waiting. Part of me died here  
> so another could go on.  
> \- Marty McConnell


	5. this is a special way of being afraid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fennec Shand's life has been one long march through an ocean of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: nightmares, blood, fighting, the general horror of the sarlacc, explosives.

When Boba saved her life, he washed her wounds. He sewed her skin shut with careful precision. He put the chip in her head that keeps her walking straight, and the organs in her belly that keep her breathing. 

She watched when he plucked the chip from that girls neck and wondered if it felt the same. If it felt like being given a second chance.

Why did he do it? For either of them? He could've killed her instead, but he didn't. It would've been so much easier. 

Maybe it would've only been easier for her. 

The fire crackles. She asks; "She'll be safe there, with them?" 

Boba nods firmly. There is a sureness in his disposition that eases her nervous heart. "They saved my life. They treat children well. Nobody will find her there."

She can trust that reasoning. "Okay."

Fennec leans forward to prod at their meagre little campfire. Their camp is far from the rest of the world, placed squarely between the city and the path of the girl they'd just given to the Tuskens. They decided to sit here and keep watch, just for tonight. The desert air is cool against her bare arms.

In her bag, she now carries all the credits and the data they might need to steal the throne. They also have the explosive. It was Wonlo's, once, and she remembers the plans he'd had for it- he'd kept watch of it like a hawk, waiting for just the right moment to set it alight.

She wonders if it may be just the catalyst they need. Her head aches. Sometimes, it is impossible to think too much about a daunting task; the sheer size of it hovers over your shoulder and casts steep shadows. 

"Why did you go with him?" asks Boba. She'd like to throw his nosiness back in his face, but that wouldn't be fair. He helped her kill him. She owes him this much.

When she first looked at Wonlo's familiar face, Fennec was overcome with the desire to sink her thumbs into his eyes until his skull crumpled like paper. 

But that simply wasn't in the cards; across the room she saw Tulan, and saw the looming threat of the trigger in Wonlo's hand like a tether holding her close. In that crowd of raucous faces, Tulan was a beacon. 

She submitted her rifle because she wanted to avoid making a scene. She submitted _herself_ because she remembered a girl with stubby montrals and gold eyes saying, begging, _promise you'll take me with you_. 

So she gave in. Looking back, it was the only choice available to her. Anything else would have reduced Fennec to a husk of a human- the self-serving, single-minded coward she was only months before, who'd fled the oncoming storm like she was the only one who's life depended on it. 

"I knew he had information that would be integral, when you and I take on Fortuna." She looks down at her boots. "The credits, too, and the bomb."

The reason feels flimsy even to her- in her very core, she knows it was really about freeing Tulan, and about watching Wonlo get what was coming to him. It was an attempt to repay the debts that keep her up at night. She is a selfish person, but she is done running- done letting others experience cruelty due to her negligence. 

Boba stares at her. 

It cuts deep enough to force an admission- she sighs. "I did it because I made a mistake." 

"The girl."

She hoped, once, that he would never see through her the way he sees through others. 

All her life she clung to that steel wall, that established boundary that kept her propped upright. It has shielded her all her life. Fennec does not want to know too surely what anyone thinks of her. 

That wall crumbles. Really, it's been gone since the moment she tried to kill him, and all he did in retaliation was help her up and teach her to walk again. 

Fennec exhales slowly. "I knew her. When I worked with them, she was there- among others." Her stomach twists in painful knots. "I don't know where the others went."

"Huh." Is all Boba seems able to say, one hand covering half his face. "You chose a strange bunch to work with." 

She looks at him very seriously and tells him the truth so there will be no confusion. "I'm a liar, and a backstabber," she says, "and I have worked with all the filthiest scum in the galaxy." 

Boba laughs. He _laughs_ at her. Her lip curls ever so slightly. 

"What?" 

"If you worked with _all_ of them, we would've seen more of each other." 

She laughs, too. 

•

Boba wakes up like he always does- sweating, tear-streaked, clawing at his face and his clothes with the desperation of a dying animal. 

"Boba?"

Fennec tries to pretend she doesn't notice- but this time it doesn't stop the moment he snaps to awareness. His eyes don't dart about in shame, he doesn't turn onto his back or murmur a gruff greeting, getting up to walk away- no, he throws himself onto the ground, scrambling at the dirt.

She leaps to her feet, rifle forgotten in the sand. 

Fennec moves to kneel beside him. Time freezes. Once her hands are on his shoulders, he rolls onto his back, pathetic, weak, trembling. His eyes glisten with tears. 

He claws at his neck like there's something choking him.

"Boba!" She hisses, grasping forcefully at his shoulders, scrambling for a solution. Her mind races. She doesn't know how to help. 

"Boba," she tries more gently this time. Her hands brush over his back in a soothing circle. "Breathe. You're awake. It's fine. _Breathe._ " 

Through the blur of his terror, he is conscious enough to follow her instructions. He inhales once, then twice, holding it for four seconds at a time until finally his panicked heaving devolves into a quiet wheeze.

The shame follows swiftly after. 

Boba Fett's hands loosen where they grabbed at her and he stumbles back, crouching in the dirt near his makeshift bed, head in his hands.

"I don't want to upset you," she starts very carefully, "but what just happened?"

It takes him a moment to reply. When he does, his voice is hoarse. "Nightmare." 

"That must have been quite the nightmare."

"I'm sorry." 

It's the first time he's really apologized to her for anything. She keeps her hands at her sides, unsure what to do with it. "It's… fine." 

Boba sits still for a moment, face still pressed into his hands. It isn't until he finally releases one shaky exhale that he dares speak again.

"It's awful." 

She slowly kneels across from him. "What is?"

"The pit of Carkoon- the Sarlacc. I see it in my mind every day, all night, when I close my eyes. Thousands fell into that pit, Fennec, kept alive beyond what was natural. Slowly drained, given just enough to be fed off of."

 _The Sarlacc_. She steels herself against the horror he describes.

"It felt.. endless. Feels endless. All the voices talk and talk and talk, and they get inside your head-" he casts a look her way, and she notes how the panic has slipped from his face, replaced by one of deep thought. "It makes no sense to me either." 

Her first reaction is, naturally, confusion. The bafflement must show on her face, because he keeps trying to clarify his meaning. Calmer, now, he explains; "I got out, but I'm still in there every day. All the time, in the back of my head. When I go to sleep." 

"It's a monster," is all she can offer him. 

Everything about him changes in an instant. He inhales once more, scrubs at his face, and rises to his feet in one swift motion. The conviction in his eyes is fiercer than anything she's ever seen. 

"I have to kill it."

She doesn't know anything about creatures like it. Doesn't doubt him, either, but-- " _Can_ it be killed?" 

Everything dies in time- but being able to _kill_ something is a different matter. 

Boba Fett grins at her. "They have enemies too. Krayt Dragons eat them whole."

"We can't eat it."

Her deadpan tone draws a raw, rasping laugh out of him, shoulders shaking. "That's right. We would need to decimate it completely. It's underground."

She takes a moment to decipher his meaning. It's underground. It can be killed with violence. If it eats whatever's dropped into it, then they would be able to drop something deadly into its unsuspecting maw. It's a pleasing mental image. 

She thinks of the explosive she stole from Wonlo's safe. _It's a catalyst_ , he'd said to her. 

"It needs to die," Fennec says. "you said there's people still in there?"

Boba nods, his posture tense. "So many."

"Can they be saved?"

He shakes his head, expression twisting like the admission hurts him. " _No."_

"That's.. unfortunate." It's a tragedy, really, but she's not one to lament for what can't be changed. 

"As long as the Sarlacc lives there will be no peace for me."

This is her chance; she can restore his life in return for saving hers. She gathers her wits about her and replies coolly; "I'll help you."

He doesn't move.

"I'll help you kill it," she reiterates. "I will."

What's another death on her hands? Her life has been a long march through an ocean of blood. The deep end sucks her in.

Boba stares at her, expression full of warning. "I don't know what will happen. It could kill you."

She looks at the options strewn out before her. The banality of a life spent in hiding, the transitory existence of someone on the run, or the humiliation of succumbing to the judgment of the law. 

She chooses conviction, and loyalty. She chooses the debt that hangs around her throat more like a tender embrace than a noose. 

"I know it could."

Fennec Shand decides she’ll use her violence for good. Put the dead out of their misery, free the world of one more black hole, and shake loose the horror that clings to Boba that keeps him small and afraid. It'll be easier this way. Life will go on. She reaches out across the gap between them and clasps his forearm like a soldier. 

"Let's get you free."

•

When the ship approaches the Sarlacc, Fennec notices the way Boba tenses in the pilot’s seat. His hands curl tightly around the joysticks, white-knuckled, and she regrets not offering to fly it herself. 

“That’s it,” he grinds out, as if the massive toothy pit in the distance could be anything else. “It’s still there.”

“I see it.” 

They come to a halt a klick away, as if the idea of parking right beside it is too daunting. She makes no mention of the distance. They can walk. 

She is surprised by the sheer range of emotion he’s expressed to her in these past days, even if it was against his will- when she’d seen him before in her youth, he’d always been this pillar of strength- that still, unmoving visor gave nothing away, and he carried himself with such confidence that she’d never dared speak a word to him. Even after his disappearance, the people in their mutual circles had made reference to him in taunts and jeers, and hushed, frightened whispers.

Boba Fett has a legacy. He's not even _dead_ and he's got one. She, on the other hand, had better hurry to catch up if she's got any desire to be remembered. 

When their boots meet the sand, she checks once more that the bomb is secure and ready to detonate. It’s a terribly precarious thing to carry on one’s hip, but she tries not to let it put her on edge any more than necessary. They spent hours hatching this plan; every step is laid out before them. She goes through the mental checklist over and over as they trudge across the desert, him with more ease and comfort to his movements than her. She’s loathe to admit it, but he’s made himself far more familiar with the desert than she ever has.

They come up to the rim of it like wary animals at the edge of a cliff, eyes wide, movements stiff and slow and careful. She dares not lean too far to peer into it- she can see enough of the creature. It’s mostly mouth, teeth dripping strange liquid, flexing in and out impatiently. 

“Eugh,” she grunts, trying hard not to breathe too deeply through her nose. The stench of rotting meat rises from it in steamy, warm waves that turn her stomach. “It’s huge.” 

Boba nods. If anyone knows how big the creature is, how far it's burrowed into the ground, it's him. When he speaks, it is careful and measured, quiet, like he’s concerned it may overhear them. “Do you think it will work?”

She seriously considers the question. This is no time for overconfidence. “If it doesn’t, we will try again someday.”

It is her way of saying- I’ll stay with you. I won’t leave you, even if it doesn’t work. Even if you wake up every night, thrashing and in pain, I won’t leave you alone in it. She says nothing aloud, and pulls a bag off her shoulder, setting the box containing the explosive just a few feet away. 

She’s used bombs before. It’s not unfamiliar territory. She checks the detonator, looking it over to ensure nothing will go wrong. Her eyes traverse the box, black as night, the metal worn by time, dented in spots. It’s come a long way.

She moves for the latch and says; “Everything's ready. Let’s kill it.” 

An arm wraps around her throat from behind.

The sky tips - Fennec goes skidding across the sand, pulled onto her back as Boba falls onto his; her instincts kick in and that’s it. His arm twists around her throat, and the free one grasps her wrist and holds it in place. He makes some choked, awful noise, and the Sarlacc screeches- 

It knows. It knows.

He meant it, when he said they were tethered together. That the creature lived in his mind, and his in the creature’s. She still has one free hand- scrambling for purchase, she digs her heels into the sand and raises herself up just enough to elbow him firmly in the gut. She thinks she hears the groaning cries of hundreds erupt from the maw of the pit.

The fight turns violent once his grip loosens, and she flips onto her front to grapple with him, trying desperately to tear the knife from his hands. She manages to push it down and the twitch of his strong hands jerks it against his own face, where it slices the flesh of his cheek. The Sarlacc roars; so does he. 

“Boba!” 

He flips them over, him atop her once more and there’s blood dripping from his face onto hers.

She realizes hauntingly late that they are far too close to the beast. They balance precariously at the rim of the pit. He seems to notice her noticing, and suddenly he’s heaving and coughing. For a terrified second, Fennec is afraid that he will pin her here until they both tumble into it.

Facing certain death, she presses the edge of her knife to his throat and for a sliver of a moment, the instinct to kill in self defense nearly outweighs her desire to repay her debt to him. His clouded, unfocused eyes dart back and forth.

They are not good people. They have unflinchingly served the cruelest leaders of their age. Their motivations are selfish, and their morals misguided. The mere nature of their living has come at a great cost to the world. But she loves him. Like a brother, a friend, someone to keep close when the days grow long, to pull you back from the brink when it all becomes unbearable- and she won't give it up so easily.

She won't kill him; she can't. 

"Fennec?" He breathes, and looks at her and then down at himself. His eyes slowly clear. A droplet of his blood falls on her forehead and he grabs her, rolling them back and away from the gaping pit. It wasn’t him who attacked her; it was whatever still tethered him to that creature. Terror could warp anyone into something else if you let it. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and she knows he means it because he squeezes her arm very gently and crawls back and away, helping her to her feet. He swipes the blood off her face with one tender thumb. “I’m not thinking right. I- it knows what’s coming.” 

“I understand.” He will have to work for her sincere forgiveness, but that can come later. 

She steps over to the discarded box, waiting, silent and dangerous on the sand not a foot away. She grasps the black box, passing it resolutely to Boba. He nods and steps back. 

He throws the bomb into its waiting mouth. 

At first, nothing happens. The tendrils and teeth of the Sarlacc still ripple at the edges. The little black box falls into its mouth just like anything else; Fennec glances over at Boba, gauging his reaction. He’s watching it, too, chest heaving. 

She taps his shoulder, passing him the blinking detonator. 

“We have to go,” she murmurs, still breathless from their fight. “Step back.” 

“I have to kill it,” he says, “or I’ll do things like- _that-_ for all my life.”

Ten feet away, the bleeding, battered warriors stand and watch. He presses the detonator, and she knows it must feel like a death sentence; if he wants to go through with it despite the fear and the pain, she won’t stop him.

This is what he has to do to move on. She wonders what she’ll have to do to move on from her own terror, too.

Far beneath the ground, the bomb explodes. The ground all around them hums from the vibration; she can feel it shake her bones and clamber up her spine and she widens her stance, trying to avoid falling. The world trembles, and the Sarlacc swells out of its pit, its massive teeth suddenly straining for the sky like it's trying to escape its own death.

Boba coughs and gasps, grasping his middle like it's him that's being torn to pieces. While the Sarlacc is dying under the earth, he falls, and seizes on the ground. A billow of sand bursts out from the stinking mouth of the roaring animal, and the pit in the ground swells and grows in size, the rim of the gap collapsing until it's alarmingly close to where they stand.

Fennec grabs her twitching companion under his arms and drags him back.

The pit stops spreading across the sand, and suddenly the hole fills with dirt. Where once was a monster, there’s now just a flat expanse of swirling sand filtering in towards the center, slowing as it twists. Beneath her hands, Boba goes slack.

He’s dead. He’s dead, he’s certainly dead. There’s no other explanation- the monster is dead and it took him with it. Fennec doesn’t know what to feel- her heart catches in her throat and she doesn’t dare look down, because she doesn’t want to see him cold and empty. She can’t stand to think of him as anything but fierce, and good. 

She can’t just give up on him. She drops him on the ground and rushes to stand over him, planning to push the air back into his lungs with her hands if she can, to do anything to bring him back to life like he did for her.

When she stands over him, his eyes are open, and he’s breathing. 

He starts laughing, then, tears rolling down his cheeks but he's laughing, and smiling, hysterical. “We did it,” he breathes and then, sitting upright to grab her hands he says more firmly, “We did it.”

"Yes," she wheezes, and drops to kneel beside him. "It's dead. It's over."

Boba Fett made her a new person- in exchange, she killed the Sarlacc, and killed the people that screamed in his head all night. They're even. Fair and square. She could get up and leave now and he would have no right to protest. But she won’t. She couldn’t. Fennec will stay and help him topple Fortuna. They'll play darts again, and she'll make every effort to actually aim for his hand next time, just to test his reflexes. 

She wants to show him how to prepare caf that doesn't taste like gasoline. They'll get real beds, and their own rooms, no longer confined to bunks like children. She'll stay because the life she's lived didn't suffice. The second chance at life has changed her. They'll recover his armor, and she'll wrap up all the loose ends that keep her up at night. They'll rule over this miserable desert and make something with it.

She is tired of running. Fennec will stay with him, because there must be something better than the life she's lived. There has to be more. 

Boba turns to her with the eyes of a child. She's never seen him look so small. She realizes that they are not so different at all. He swallows. "Thank you." 

They are not good people. In that moment, they forgive each other for it. 

On their knees in the sand they fall into each other’s arms, shoulders shaking with laughter, or sobs, or something in-between. She knows he's as exhausted as she is- and yet she's never felt more alive. They rock back, looking one another in the eyes. 

"Come on," she says very seriously, both hands gripping his shoulders. "Let's go find your armor." 

"Okay," says Boba, smiling from ear to ear. "Okay." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, there is a place / where someone loves you both before / and after they learn what you are.  
> Neil Hilborn, "Lake", _The Future_
> 
> thank you all for your support, every comment has made my day better and motivated me to keep writing. ❤️ 
> 
> if you'd like to continue following boba's story, check out my boba/din fic _while there is still time._


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